


Till it bore an apple bright

by Crazyamoeba



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Anger, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Meltdown, Overstimulation, Shoplifting, Stealing, Will Graham Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Will Graham with anger issues, dark!Will, kind of, references to past physical child abuse, references to past spanking/belting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-14 04:16:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10528767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crazyamoeba/pseuds/Crazyamoeba
Summary: Will told Hannibal that he grew up poor. What he didn’t mention was that sometimes - often - if he wanted to feed himself, he resorted to stealing. And, well. The habit kind of stuck.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is possibly almost a little AU-ish because of my description of Will’s childhood. I kind of made my own headcanon for Will’s dad and their relationship. There is also kind of hints at Dark!Will here, I suppose.  
> Warnings: There’s flashbacks to a child being hit with a belt. No sexual elements to it, but be aware all the same.

_The cold danced spitefully across his skin._

_It did nothing to drown out the ache in his belly, and made the sting in his thighs and ass burn hotter with an irony he was not capable of appreciating._

_He was standing so perfectly still, allowing the snow and ice to crawl through the holes in his shoes, to soak into the bitter honeycomb of his bones. Allowed it to rip and tear its way through skin and tissue, to lay frozen roots within his body, sealing him to the ground._

_He let the silvery puffs of air gently petrify skin and muscle, crackling over every pore on his face. Gently caressing, dusting it with frost that would eventually bite its way through the tender flesh there, ruining and burning. But which, for now, only served to make it impossible for him to bat so much as a frozen eyelash._

_It made him still. It blanketed the snarling, frothing fury that was ripping at his insides, roiling with the certainty that if it couldn’t have Will, then it would tear a hole through his stomach, his eyes, escape from every gap it could rend in him and find something else to ruin. To hurt._

_And so he stood perfectly still, perfectly quiet. He let the cold do what it would with his limbs, his teeth, his hands._

_Because if he moved a single muscle, twitched a purpling finger or ran his tongue along his teeth, he was afraid he would give in and do what he desperately didn’t want to want._

_He wanted to grab something warm and alive and squeeze._

_He wanted to choke until some poor creature’s outside looked like his insides. He wanted to dig and crush until he could see eyes bulge and film with the helpless terror and futile rage that he would never be able to see in anything that wasn’t himself._

_It was the only way he would ever be able to see something that was bent and twisted into the same shapes as the tines prickling and growing through his insides. The only way he would ever be able to see something that made him feel less alone, see something that reflected him without having to look in the mirror._

_He tried to avoid that._

_The obvious choice was his father._

_His father, who worked long hours through longer days and nights, to be able to provide Will with the things he should have. Who Will knew felt an insidious stab of guilt whenever he was glad of their very few belongings, because it made it easier to pack up and move with the work._

_His father, who couldn’t possibly ever forget that it wasn’t enough. That Will still didn’t have everything he needed. That, most months, he didn’t even have some of the things he needed._

_Who knew that Will was fading like something left too long in the winter sun, who could see that his son’s recycled clothes were growing many tattered holes, but never seemed to grow too short or too small._

_Who knew what empty spaces greeted Will from the fridge and the cupboards each morning before he left for school, and who knew that his son’s belly was trying to turn on itself with the bitter juices of absence._

_And who still wouldn’t do anything other than unbuckle his belt when his quiet boy, his good boy, came home that afternoon with his jacket pockets rustling with shiny, colourful labels, telling of flavours the likes of which were rarely seen in the Graham kitchen._

_Because the Grahams were not thieves._

These _Grahams were not thieves._

_His daddy, his granddaddy, and probably his grandmother and all the other apples that had fallen from the tree, sure. Thieves, and gamblers and liars to the one._

_Not sick or fatally blighted people, but their flaws had always kept the water lapping just a little too close to their gasping mouths, and eventually it always dragged them further under than they had meant to go. Eventually they had all succumbed, and allowed themselves to go gently below the surface with very little fight or unnecessary commotion._

_He felt the same pull within himself some days. And when it pulled too fast and too hard, was just too much to resist, the nausea on those days felt a lot like oil-slick guilt._

_On the days when the lure of winning for once in his goddamn life - a win to solve all their problems, so the meager paycheck in his hands would never have to be their lifeline again - was too much for him to resist, it felt like he was standing back in his own father’s kitchen._

_But he was not his daddy, or his granddaddy, and although he was himself perhaps no better, he would make damn sure that his son was everything they could never bring themselves to be. That was the one way in which Bill Graham would always be better than his forbears._

_And if that meant hearing his soft-spoken son cry as he laid the belt into his skin, if that meant steeling himself against the unfairness of it all as he held his son while he twitched and tried to overcome the urge to run or simply collapse and curl up on the floor while the belt did its work, then god damn it, that is what he would do._

_And for reasons that Will Graham has never understood, these thoughts that are buried deep within the most quiet places in his father’s chest, practically sing to Will in their clarity and vividness._

_They are so open to Will that, even as his legs sting under his father’s attention, it is as though they are his own thoughts, invading the space in Will’s mind that was meant only for him._

_Filling those spaces and eroding any possibility of even the most fleeting, childish hate that Will wanted to feel behind his eyes as his skin felt the weight of his father’s good intentions._

_And so the one thing that Will allows himself as he stands in the mocking wind is for a few brackish tears to fall. Because there is little danger in this movement, and even if there was, he’s not sure that he could control it. You can’t keep everything on the inside._

_He loves his father._

_He loves him, but at times like this, even the sharp and relentless glinting of the mirrors inside of him can’t make him stop wanting to hate him too._

_Because after it was all over and Bill had propped him back up on his feet, fastened his jeans for him with stilted, jerking motions, he had stroked one large, roughened hand down his son’s face, wiping away the tears and gripping the pointed little chin._

_“I…I know, Will. I’m sorry, buddy.” The static in his voice belying the surety of his hands._

_“It’ll get better, bud, okay? But we don’t steal, Will. We don’t ever steal.”_

_And all of a sudden, even with the biting cold of the snow tethering him, the urge to howl and scream and lash out with all the jagged little points that grow inside him, is so bright as to be blinding. And for one terrifying, helplessly ecstatic moment where he feels just how powerful his brittle little body could be if he let it, he fears that those urges might just win out._

_Because even with all the tiny mirrors inside his mind, he is unable to come to peace with his father’s assertion._

_“We don’t steal, Will.”_

_And the only thing that chases the echo of his father’s words around is head, are the ones that he will never, ever allow himself to breathe in reply._

You might not. But I will.

 

–——————————————————————————————-

 

Will’s fingers are restless, they twitch at his side and all he wants to do with them is dig them into his skin and just….pull until he tears it off.

Or maybe that’s just the memory of the crime scene talking.

Either way, today is…today is not a good day. Will doesn’t like the words. Doesn’t like the way they feel in his head, nor the way they taste in his mouth whenever he rolls them experimentally between his teeth in response to one of Hannibal’s soft, gently intrusive questions.

_(“Tell me, why are you so angry?”)_

He never quite gets around to voicing them aloud, even to Hannibal, even though they are the only words that Will can ever fix on that would even begin to contain the nuances of his particular brand of crazy. Simplicity is always the best umbrella.

But he just can’t quite bring himself to say them. They feel…wrong.

Wrong in the way that a well-aimed knife feels wrong.

It hits all the right places with all the wrong, spiteful edges.

The words make him feel…stupid. Small. Like a child that can’t control himself. Like the child that his father had seen very occasionally, when he was able to look through the soft words and the passive gaze.

On those days, Bill Graham – normally even-tempered and downright indulgent of his frail, only son – was harsh and rough with the boy he could see behind the gentle, blank eyes.

And Will distinctly remembers hating every second of it, because the knowledge that he had allowed someone to see had felt like failure.

He had somehow allowed his father to see him so clearly that the older man knew what those achy, itching tines growing in his lungs needed.

Will remembers snapping and snarling, railing against the large hands pushing and pulling, directing every one of his movements throughout the day, channeling them into something productive. Guiding him firmly from one activity to the next, looming by his side every moment of the day, snatching at his hands and forcing them back to their work – be it mending fences, or boat motors, or fishing gear – every time the burning itch beneath his skin got the better of him, and he tried to throw down his tools and walk away.

Will remembered the feel of his father’s arms like steel bands around his own, around his chest. The feeling of his father knocking his feet out from underneath him on the few occasions he tried to wander out into the cold, or the swamps, or the barren forests of wherever they happened to be calling ‘home’ that week.

Remembered the occasional, repetitive lash of the man’s belt when even that hadn’t been enough.

Remembered sobbing bitterly and wholeheartedly because he hated his father for daring to see, for just a few days a year, what lay beneath.

So, yeah.

Will doesn’t like to say that he’s having a Bad Day, even though it is the truth, and even though Dr Hannibal Lecter would probably be a good person to say those words to.

He doesn’t like feeling like a feral and fragile creature who is likely to explode with rage and start attacking everyone and everything if his careful routine is disturbed.

Unfortunately, Will’s life seems to follow a pattern of 'fuck you, Will Graham’, and so he feels that way regardless of whether he says the words.

Ever the fragile teacup, he supposes.

And so he stands in the harsh and slightly flickering glare of the grocery store’s overhead lights, and it is all he can do to stand still and quiet while Jack plays the social butterfly and makes the rounds of the store’s three employees.

He itches. He burns. He wants to stamp his feet every minute that he still hears Jack’s steady, droning voice throwing questions to the ground like litter.

He’s tired. He’s failed. He wants to go home and stop listening to someone else’s design float around his head.

He’s hungry, god damn it, Jack.

He feels an aftershock of staggering resentment for the fact that he hasn’t eaten in what is probably approaching twelve hours.

Because Jack is Jack, and Will is Will, and no matter how much he wishes he could say that he doesn’t want to…please Jack, to make him proud, he has never reached the stage where he can say it without gnashing his teeth around the lie.

There is also the fact that Jack is loud, and looming, and even when he speaks in that rumbling undertone, he fills the room, darkens everything else in it until the only thing that Will can feel is the bubbling, rising certainty that Jack is unhappy, and eventually that unhappiness is the only thing that Will can hear, blocking out the sound of even the killers that he inhabits.

And that loudness in Jack, it makes him want to cringe and cower, and his stomach thrashes anxiously, as though he is a little boy again, standing in front of a man with love and relentless, guilt-ridden determination in his eyes and a belt in his hand.

And it’s just….it’s just so loud, and it makes him want to crawl into a dark, tight space somewhere and block his ears until he forgets what made his ears ring and his stomach tighten.

And frankly, with all that going on, most days he doesn’t even mark the passage of time by missed mealtimes.

So when Jack demands that Will follow to heel by the time the fog finally clears, sometimes Will finds himself being aware of a cloying, gnawing hunger that is sickeningly familiar.

And so here he is, shifting from foot to foot under these awful flickering lights, listening to bewildered store clerks repeating the same story, verbatim, over and over again.

And he wants to leave, right now, because he can feel himself becoming so angry that he is terrified that he will no longer be able to keep a lid on it.

Abruptly, without raising his eyes to do even a cursory sweep of the store – he knows this, he’s done this, he’s good at this, he’s nothing if not a good boy – he stalks out of the shop with such a lack of grace and control that he knows he’s going to hear about it later. But that’s fine.

So long as the only thing he has to hear about is his rudeness, and not the packet of garishly-coloured candy he had flicked into his pocket on the way out, he will be content.

As usual, the small act of taking something has ever so slightly soothed his relentless anger.

The act of damaging, of hurting, in whatever small way, has appeased the viciously, helplessly small and deformed child that still dwells within him.

He allows the drop of vindictive pleasure to outweigh the crushing, sticky wave of guilt that tars his innards, and keeps walking, stabbing his feet into the slushy mud/snow slurry that covers the ground.

“Will?”

The voice is warm and mild, and everything that Will had hoped to not want. He keeps walking, brushing close enough by that even he is able to catch hold of the faint scent that is bordering dangerously on familiar.

The hand on his wrist is firm and warm, and so gentle that Will hates himself for allowing it to slow his pace.

He keeps his head down, swings his feet through another couple of mournful, surly steps before he stops, a little ahead of Hannibal, but with his hand outstretched behind him, still caught in the man’s grasp.

He purses his lips, because he wants to make sound, but that absolutely cannot happen right now.

“Will, come here for a moment.” Lighthearted, quiet and untroubled, as if trying to set a more desirable pace for Will’s frantically fluttering pulse.

Will doesn’t want to fall easily into any calm, reasonable rhythm that has been set for him by that smooth, reassuring voice.

He wants to unclench his grinding teeth and let out all the sounds that they’re keeping secret. He wants to go home, with his vindictive little treasure.

He wants to rip and tear things until they feel like the sounds he can’t release.

He tries for a smile, like a normal person. What comes out is despicably weak and withered and so disgustingly in need.

“I really don’t want to, Dr Lecter." He warbles the words between his aching teeth,

There was the minute, soft quirk of the lips that almost passed for a gently amused smile.

“I have no doubt.” Despite the mellow undercurrent of amusement, it is soft and doesn’t snag against Will’s frayed temper.

Hannibal, ever graceful and astoundingly, horrifyingly considerate, does Will the favour of not actually expecting him to obey, and he moves himself closer to Will. Tucks himself close against Will’s side, slowly releases his wrist when they are close enough that he has to dip his head ever so slightly to look at the side of Will’s face.

“Please.” Although calm and mild and nothing close to a rebuke, it is not how anyone else would choose to say the word. “What do you have in your pocket, Will?”

Will says nothing, only clenches his jaw and his greedy fist around the bag in his pocket. The crinkling of the plastic tinkles through the air mockingly, and Will is so grateful that Hannibal chooses not to make a joke of it that he feels tears start to prick at his eyes.

“It’s alright.” The words are murmured almost directly into his ear. Discreet and soothing and with room for nobody but the two of them.

“You took something from the shelf and put it into your pocket before you left. It’s alright.”

Hannibal interrupts himself as Will’s entire body tenses in an effort to – he doesn’t know. All he knows is that the angry tears pooling at the corners of his eyes make him want to smash his head - hard – into Hannibal’s chest, and keep going until one or preferably both of them hurt.

“There’s nothing you need to do, Will. Only give me what you took, and then we may leave.”

The words are so steady and quiet that Will feels his hand unclenching without conscious thought. His breaths come quick and heavy through his nose.

“It’s late. You have been working without respite, and you are tired.” The words, spoken so moderately and with such soothing acceptance, make Will’s knees want to buckle, but this.

This has always been so hard. No surrender, even to gentle words and lenient affection, has ever come easy to Will. It feels as though he’s losing parts of himself, as if they’re flaking away like burnt skin and falling to the ground.

But Hannibal is there, with his hushed words continuing in an unbearably comforting, melodious stream, and Will feels as though the man’s hands are catching all those little pieces as they fall.

Catching them and gently, with endless patience, showing them to the small, hysterical child inside of Will that is still screaming and crying and throwing himself on the ground in an effort to make it all go away.

Will glances up at the face above him, and it feels as if Hannibal has been holding those pieces in front of his contorted face this whole time, merely waiting for him to calm down enough to see that they are not broken, burnt pieces. They are whole, and fine, and nothing has been broken that cannot be carefully slotted back into place.

Will doesn’t even realise that he has traded Hannibal’s little parts of William Graham for the crumpled bag in his hands, until Hannibal utters a soft, “thank you.”

Hannibal dips his head even closer to Will’s ear, murmurs, “I will be back momentarily.”

And then he is gone, striding back towards the store with Will’s stolen treasure, and for a moment the anger threatens to come back full-force.

Because that was his thing. He took it. He got it. It was his little victory, his bitter little ball of triumphant hurt, one of the few instances of damage that he had been able to lob outwards, away from himself, and into the wider world. For once.

That was his win. And Hannibal was taking it back, talking to the clerk, smoothing things over in that calm, dependable way of his, making everything right again with his silver tongue and impeccable manners.  
And then Will could see a few words exchanged with Jack, and then Hannibal was striding back out of the store, not a single hair out of place after destroying Will’s win.

Will can’t help the scowl and the tensing of limbs as Hannibal approaches. Can’t help the way his teeth itch and want, for just a moment, to sink into Hannibal’s traitorous hand.

“I know.” Is all the man says, quiet and accepting like everything is fine, and it makes Will want to choke and it makes him want to grab Hannibal and shake him and hold onto him and never let go.

“Come. Uncle Jack is not expecting you back until tomorrow.” There is a light hand at the small of his back, and Will wants to shove it away, wants to grab it and sink his teeth into it because how dare Hannibal make him relent this way.

How dare he lay that hand there, de-clawing his rage with gentle, knowing fingers. Will doesn’t want anyone to soothe his anger.

But if Hannibal lets that hand drop, Will might just punch him square in the face.


End file.
